


an exercise in patience

by domesticatedantelope (vaultie_glass)



Series: power couple [8]
Category: Ride or Die (Visual Novel)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Overstimulation, Rope Bondage, Shibari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 04:56:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20687855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaultie_glass/pseuds/domesticatedantelope
Summary: The one about patience; or, Colt and Mercy are familiar with ropes.





	an exercise in patience

Mercy seals her own fate with one short and hurried text:

_Be home late tonight. Group project is taking forever._

Halfway through the next dense data set, her phone jolts with his even shorter answer: _I’ll be waiting._

Something like anticipation simmers in her stomach. She reads the text, rereads it twice, three simple words that feel somehow so filthy, full of promise. _Waiting _could mean anything; her traitorous imagination wrestles loose from her control and scatters off into a hundred different tempting possibilities. The warm pink of a blush unfolds across her cheeks, and lingers long after she tries to sink herself back into Russian phonemes and the presentation looming ominously at the end of her week.

Colt is rarely the more patient between the two of them, but now that Mercy has his vague, distracting promise bouncing wildly around her thoughts -

She’s feeling a little impatient herself.

Try as she might to silence it, Mercy retains that eager tension, driving too restlessly into the remnants of her work. She likes to hold herself and all things penned under her name to higher standards, but her concentration ambles and starts to lag behind; her mind is lost among the hills and hatch mark scars that shape Colt’s knuckles and how good they feel when they are bent around her wrists, her thighs, the hymnal sighs rising her throat. She spends the next few hours fidgeting, on tenterhooks, three little words and suddenly her evening stretches out into eternity.

Impatience carries her through all the clockwork motions of her travel home: gathering her books with clumsy hands and brief goodbyes thrown carelessly over her shoulder, the hastened pass from library to parking lot to highway with her boot against the gas pedal, the hand of her speedometer that inches ever higher, swinging quickly toward the legal limit. 

She watches as the needle soars past 85, and tries not to imagine what her dad would have to say about the recent detours in her good behavior.

_You drive like you’ve got something to outrun._

It’s an old and tired wound, her mind biting down on itself, but she knows better now. She rolls the window down and lets the howling wind grip fiercely at her hair, drowning the echoes of her father’s voice into white noise and city whispers. There is solace in the reckless and the tangible: the steering wheel beneath her fingers, the blur of streetlights flashing by as she flies down the freeway, her heartbeat kicking wildly within the cavern of her ribs. 

She knows better now. 

It’s not about outrunning when there’s someone to come home to.

The house is dark and quiet when she parks, the dim flicker of candlelight glowing between the curtains. Mercy slips through the front door and into distant trills of jazz, drifting an invitation from the living room, and her face smolders with sudden understanding - a learned reaction, practically Pavlovian at this point, borderline embarrassing if not for the excitement rising with it. A long day’s worth of worries falls away, quickly caged and quarantined into the corners of her mind as she hangs her coat and wanders with the steps of the possessed into the next room.

A record spins a slow rotation in her player, needle skating lazily along the grooves, filling the open room with the slick wail of sax riffs, tickles of piano keys and climbing basslines that are sure to stick in Mercy’s head for hours after. She knows every second of this album, every drumbeat and swing of bow on strings imprinted in her memory like marks against the skin. Eyes falling shut, she slows her breathing to the drawn-out, sleepy tempo, hummingbird wing flutters of percussion in her ears. 

She knows he’s there before he even speaks. No one has ever had _presence _to her like Colt Kaneko, some brutal force of magnetism, gravity within his hands. She bites her smile back before turning to face him, the blush still hot across her face. 

Colt leans an easy slant against the doorframe, forearms loosely crossed over his chest and two red loops of rope that dangle from his neck. Dark eyes work slowly down her body, like he might derive her very thoughts from the stiffness she holds in her shoulders, and after all the time they’ve spent together - this same room, this album, that rope - she has no doubt that he sees everything. 

“You look like you sped home,” he says at last, and _there it is_, lips tilting up into the same smirk that has drifted through her thoughts all evening long. “You miss me, brat?”

The words lift from her mouth as if compelled, her smile breaking loose. “I always do.” 

Her swift response earns a satisfied gleam from the black of his eyes. “Come show me how much.”

Grinning, Mercy hurls her bag aside and beelines for his open arms. He catches her against his chest, where she curls her fists around the ropes and drags herself as close to him as physics will allow. He breathes the lowest ring of laughter before capturing her mouth beneath his own, gentle first, then deeper, blunt with teeth and resolute, lips moving so _pointedly _slowly. The lazy pace of it suggests a lengthy night, but now that she is here, against the familiar warmth of his body, she might as well have all the time in the world.

When she is blushing red and sufficiently breathless from his attention, Colt leads a string of teasing kisses down her jaw, testing his teeth against the sensitive rim of her ear. Long fingers fold a solid grip among her hair and hold there, firm and undeniably secure, not quite enough to hurt. He tips her head back and regards the arch of hunger in her features with a knowing smile. “You should stretch,” he advises her calmly, conversational, with an undertone that broaches no amount of protest.

Sometimes she is tempted to resist; Colt has only ever been obliging, and she knows he will indulge her if she wants to play at biting back.

Tonight is not that night. With his grasp held fast around her hair, she might as well be liquid in his hands, fluid in form and moving to his influence. He watches acquiescence soften out across her face and sinks one final kiss against her mouth before releasing her. 

Somewhat lightheaded, Mercy turns away, escaping the intensity that heats his gaze, making a show of gathering her hair between her fingers. In a few practiced twists, she slings the long sweep of her tresses up into a messy coil, baring the nape of her neck, and she’s put only half a step between them when he yanks her back into his hands and sets his mouth against her shoulder, branding a searing kiss there, edging in with teeth and sucking hard until she gasps and arches and her knees feel weak under her weight.

Budding bruises throb beneath the skin as she steadies herself, blushing to the sound of his laughter. He has a habit of surprising her - something about the smile she gets on her face, he told her once, though she suspects the upper hand it earns him might have more to do with it. Her heart tattoos a rapid double-beat inside her ribs, tolling her anticipation as she rolls her arms above her head, stretching out the stiffness from the hours she’s spent hunched over her textbooks in the library. Her body bends into familiar steps, arching up until the softest flares of strain spark in her nerves and muscles, yawning back to life. 

She can feel him watching her, the pressure of his stare like a physical touch, a hum of strings and zigzagging piano chords that usher in “Stella by Starlight” as she settles on the floor. “Have I ever told you jazz is a weird soundtrack for this?”

There’s a muted brush of footsteps behind her, rounding her in slow consideration. “The jazz is for you,” Colt informs her curtly, two degrees defensive. “Music snob.”

“I think it’s pretty clear who’s driving here,” she jokes, and he gives the briefest snort of laughter. “You can pick something you like instead.”

His pacing lapses, landing him between the open stretch of her legs, where he kneels to meet her gaze. “It’s not about me,” he says simply. Catching her wrists in one broad hand, he draws her toward him until her thighs ache with the strain and she is nearly close enough to kiss, denying her the last few centimeters it would take to bridge the distance.

Mercy pouts, but swallows down a tempting flicker of complaint. He coasts his thumb along the soft curve of her mouth, humming low under his breath, warm and amused. He pushes in to part her lips and stroke the rough pad of his thumb over her tongue, and she blushes crimson, sucks him deeper like a reflex, giddy trickles of delight skipping in her pulse. 

“Now,” he says, and fucks his thumb in lazy thrusts across her tongue, his smile sharp with all the edges of a smirk. “_Knees_.”

She holds his gaze, folding her knees obediently beneath her.

Satisfied, Colt drags his palm once down the smooth line of her thigh, rough fingers catching at the softness of her stockings before rising to his feet. He resumes his languid study, eyes flitting thoughtfully along her limbs and joints and muscles, planning and blueprinting all the angles of her body.

Meanwhile, Mercy waits.

Her mind begins to wander, and she wonders how she looks to him, when he observes her with that all-consuming focus - she feels at once no more than bones and skin and heartbeat, instinctual, utterly human and yet wholly exalted in the same breath, beyond any perception she could ever carry of herself. She feels _beautiful_; her anxious thoughts all ease apart and disentangle, shaping into words like _worshipped _and _immortal_.

Because Colt looks at her as if he can see masterpieces etched in every curve and bend and feature of her body, and he intends to map each one of them by hand. 

He starts with the haphazard jumble of her hair, freeing the elastic from her bun with two gentle, decisive tugs, letting the tresses tumble loosely down her back. Knowing fingers glide the drop of her spine, parting dark waves of hair and winding them more fully at the crown of her head, tying errant waves back into place with a skillful twist of hands. His fingertips descend her neck, tracing the bruises from his teeth, the heartbeat crashing in her throat. And then, abrupt, _possessively_, he grabs her by the hips and slides her back into his lap, biting a laugh against the softness of her throat.

Mercy squeaks in surprise, clutching at his hands as her stockings slip against the hardwood floor. Her cheeks suffuse with heat at his proximity, his breath against her skin and no amount of space between them. She longs for even closer, but if Colt has proven anything to her over the years, over the slow rotations of that record in the player, she has faith he will provide. His palms and fingers grip securely at her hips, shifting to drag slow paths along the gentle curve of her stomach, the warmth from his hands sinking through her blouse. 

“Comfortable?” The word rumbles a pleasant sound against her skin, followed by an indulgent draw of teeth along her shoulder. He may bite and grab and fuck his thumb into her mouth, but he always, _always _asks, keeps constant measure of her limits and reactions. Colt will only ever hurt her just enough to make her come, and the comfort of that understanding floats with all the buoyancy of lifeboats in her heart. 

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.” 

His touch follows the soft slopes of her forearms, curling in with tempered strength around her wrists, and she lets her hands fall trustingly into his lead, lets him guide each arm behind her back and cross them one over the other. She lets him hold her _captive_, helpless to his grasp, relinquishing against all instinct, and her voice catches somewhere beneath her throat, a rush of anxious pleasure twisting through her, pulsing hot between her thighs. 

The first coarse length of rope slinks rough over her forearms. She fidgets at the familiar itch, sensory memory arising in its wake: the thrill of rushing blood, suspension, spinning and Stella by Starlight. Resounding calm sinks through her thoughts, slicing a path of soothing nothing as he loops the rope around her wrists and forearms, locking them together, cinching tight against the muscle. Pleats of jute dig lines into her arms, biting in just deep enough to feel the pressure of their hold. She knows they will leave trails behind, trench warfare forged across her skin in brutal red and blue.

He will be touching her for days until they fade.

He finishes the first knot with a final tug, and no amount of shimmying wrests any give from its control. His grip is certain while he tests and crosses and adjusts, slipping his fingers underneath the tension there until the rope fits snug against her skin. When he’s ensured the measure of his work, she feels his touch tracing across her open palms, and her fingers wiggle silent reassurance back at him.

A sense of stillness settles in as he continues, leading crimson cords of rope around her arms, her chest, weaving them back into the web of knots he’s formed between her shoulders just to double back and steadily retrace his steps with more. 

Already she can feel the pressure when she breathes, a thousand forceful fingers pushing, pulling into place, the shape of the divine in crimson red against her skin. He teases teeth at the base of her throat, taking taut-wound rope into his fist, moving her body to his whim with sinful ease. She lolls between his hands, like every limb is molten liquid. The pull of his ropes have eroded at her worries, doubts, _decisions_, locking them firmly beyond her reach.

Colt spins her by the knees to face him with a suddenness that leaves her dizzy, and her eyelids flutter open to the utter focus etched across his features. “How are you feeling?” he asks, far too casual. “Big words,” he’s sure to add, his fingertips against the inside of her thigh and climbing higher, vanishing beneath her skirt. “Something pretty.”

She can’t think when she’s tied up, when he’s touching her like that, and _fuck him_, he _knows _this. But she meets the challenge in his eyes with vain determination, trying to compile all the fraying remnants of her senses. Her thoughts bound off and stumble over words that won’t compare until at last the proper syllables click blindly into place.

A well of triumph sings in her like music. “_Resplendent_.” 

He smiles then, his fingers pressing deeper, sliding past her stockings, finding flesh and hems of lace. “Not bad, brat,” he allows her, but his voice is pleased as he shapes languid pressure in against her through the soft lace of her thong, and she sighs a sound that borders the obscene at the sharp tides of pleasure rising to his touch. “We’ll see how long that lasts.” 

She breathes another desperate noise when he releases her, left wanting and unable to reach out for more. Tension pulls taut among the ropes behind her, and his hand exerts only a fraction of his strength at the base of her spine, pushing her down against her knees.

Mercy complies, bending smoothly to his guidance. She wades into the dark behind her eyelids, and she is adrift, existing solely through the filter of sensation, wracked with pain. Pressure flays along her arms, her thighs, nails biting lines across her palms, her heart a wild thing beating for freedom in her chest. Everything aches, and deep beneath her gut, the hurt, the heat, the helplessness compound into the sweetest pull of need.

She has, maybe, a strange relationship with pain.

And there is no pain quite like this, the slow, molasses agony where rope sinks into skin. She steadies her resolve with another easy breath drawn in between her teeth, releasing on the falling end of a moan. She counts to ten in French, then backwards. Miles Davis plays the trumpet. Inhale, hold, and exhale. Familiar. Secure. Calm. 

By the time Colt hauls her back against his chest, Mercy has found her footing in the struggle, and she has the sense of mind to answer when he murmurs something heavy with concern.

“It’s good,” she slurs, and nuzzles lovingly against his neck. 

“Good.” He laughs, fastens a hand among the soft roots of her hair and tilts her head back, baring her throat to his mouth. He kneads with teeth and gentle, teasing kisses until she whines and wiggles uselessly against him.

He keeps her pinned against his shoulder as he works with quiet diligence, winding his ropes into sharp angles like a cage across her sternum. Beneath his touch, her consciousness is whittled down to ever-present tension, leashed to stillness, blissful limitation. The world around her slows and cycles at a different pace, as if he is unwinding all the tangled threads of time itself, suspending them somewhere among the knots that bind her. He focuses intently on each inch of rope and all the places where they twist and loop together and she doesn’t think at all.

There is no resisting him when Colt angles her head back. She peers up at the silver ring that hangs and glints with candlelight above them as he teases roughened cords of rope over her neck and shoulders and the soft slope of her cheek. When he wedges them between her teeth, she opens to him, biting down with an airy moan.

He tips her face one way, and then the other, tilting her head to catch the light and properly appreciate the bound and blushing mess he’s left of her. She can’t imagine her expression when she’s tied and trying not to lose all sense of clarity, but it must be what he’s looking for, because it wins a hungry sound from somewhere in his chest. 

When he stands, the cavern of his absence yawns behind her. She whines for him, blindly, hears the dark curl of his laughter somewhere above her before he lifts her to her feet with one firm and certain push. Her head spins as she sways against his chest, dizzied and helpless to catch herself, his hands the only steady harbor in the rush of blood that throbs up to her brain. He pulls the rope free from her teeth and gently cups her jaw against his palm, rolling his thumb over the muscles there.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he teases, nudging his lips against the warm flush in her cheeks.

Mercy can only summon the parched whisper of a laugh. “You’re _so _funny.”

“I’m hilarious.”

Head falling back against his shoulder, she stares up and up to watch that slowly spinning ring, the comforting familiarity of Colt’s hands as he shackles loops of cording into place, metal clicking against metal. Tension trembles in the bonds around her with the last few knots that spiderweb across her back, straining beneath his strength when he tugs each one to completion, and it never matters how much she may brace herself - the first lift upwards always takes her breath. 

The ropes manipulate her body like a lover, crawling taut against her skin, siphoning the air from her lungs as he hauls her skyward, and suddenly she’s soaring, floorboards disappearing underneath her toes. 

Colt steadies her between his hands, and she begins to understand how planets are compelled around the sun; her center of gravity shifts in his grasp, drawn to the tips of his fingers as they follow a trajectory that he has penned like verse across her body. He knows every inch of her by touch, by lips, by heart, but he luxuriates in learning her again, wandering the canvas of her body with wide palms and knowing fingers, tracing the snaking lines where his ropes restrain her. 

With her arms locked and criss-crossed in crimson knots behind her back, Mercy can only watch the slow progression of his hands as he tugs her legs apart and makes himself at home between them. It’s presumptuous and arrogant and so unbearably _smug_, the way he handles her, the tilt of his smirk as he works another love bite into the sensitive flesh of her thigh; Colt is most in his element when he is in control, and she has put herself entirely at his mercy. 

His fingers edge the hem of her skirt higher, past her hips, leaving her squirming and exposed to the cool air between her legs. 

“Did you think about me?” he asks, rough of hunger fraying at the edges of his voice. His eyes glint with amusement, like a joke when he already knows the punchline. 

But he’ll want to hear her say it. 

“Yes.” She whines into her teeth, thoroughly distracted by his touch. “I could barely concentrate, thanks to you.”

A wicked smile curves across his face. “That’s too bad,” he laments, but no amount of penance shakes the humor in his voice. His fingertips continue undeterred, inching higher between her thighs, finding the flimsy lace of her thong and nudging the material dismissively aside. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve been thinking about touching you since you left in that _fucking _skirt this morning.”

The first brush of his fingertips against her skin tears a gasp from the depths of her lungs, and she writhes under the spiral of sensation flaring hot across her nerves. She’s spent the whole of a distracted evening thinking of those very hands, and _god_, they are precisely as relentless as she remembers. 

“I wear this to class ah-all the _time_,” she protests, whispered between soft shivers that descend her spine, chasing the bliss of his touch.

“And _I’m_ the criminal.” He casts one last teasing glance at her before he grips her by the hips and swings her closer, dragging her against his mouth. All at once his lips and tongue are wet and hot against the slick between her thighs, and Mercy arches, biting out his name in shattered gasps. He groans and guides her legs over his shoulders, pinning her open with a touch so firm she might as well be tied there too, his fingers pressing into flesh, desperate and demanding. Sharp, knife-edge pleasure gnaws between her legs, and everything strings tight with pooling tension, pressure, _need _where his devilish mouth meets her body.

“_Colt_…!” Searing embers heat beneath her skin, stoked to flames by the tip of his tongue. “Oh, _god_-!” Her hands curl into fists behind her back, and every labored breath swells in her chest, pushing in protest at the brutal lines of her restraints. Candles flicker soft halos of light in her peripheral, Colt’s gaze rising slowly up to meet her own as his lips part between her thighs, and there’s a flash of tongue before she feels him lashing long, determined strokes over the slick folds of her sex, and her eyes sink shut instinctively against the devastating pleasure that wracks through her.

Her fingers flex, impatient, aching for more contact; she wants to grip his hair and tug until he moans, wants something solid in her hands, fuck, _anything _to anchor her among the rush, but she can only hang, trust, wait, and the sense of incapacity is freeing and infuriating all at once. Her voice trembles out fractured sounds, pleading and praising, echoes of his name that make him hum approvingly between her legs. 

Mercy writhes within her bonds, her eyes caught longingly on the shape of his hands, the almost bruises where his fingers leave impressions in her skin. Her legs stiffen and twitch to clench together, but he hinges them apart with knowing ease, his laughter low and muffled and unquestionably pleased. 

For all the time he’s savored her impatience, Colt doesn’t hold back now. His mouth rounds heavy shapes against her skin, pulling white-hot wrings of pressure that draw sunburn shudders down her vertebrae, the flat of his tongue rolling in around her clit.

“_Please_,” she pants, the phonemes ragged in her voice. Her hips tremble against his palms as he propels her closer to that line, the gut-wrenching sensation of impending climax starting to ignite. One coarse hand climbs her thighs, easily finding where she throbs for him, thick fingers edging in to fill her with too-languid increments. When he crooks them, seismic shivers ripple through her, summoned to his touch, dull pleasure punctuating sharp tugs of his mouth until everything pulls together in the sweetest fullness, cords of rope locked tight around her body as she sobs and comes undone. 

Strung-up and suspended from the ceiling, coming always feels like falling, plunging endlessly into an open void, weightless in her restraints as Colt devours her through all the lightning flickers of her high. Her broken voice lifts in a whimper, _baby, baby_ fading like a mantra on her tongue, her lungs aching for breath while blinding pleasure overtakes her.

For a few crashing heartbeats, there is only the true freedom of release.

And then Mercy is slumping limp against the harness of her bindings, nudging him away with shaking knees and panting in the feathery descent that follows after climax. Little curls of bliss still pulse between her thighs as Colt eases her legs down from his shoulders, christening the muscles there with gentle kisses. His mouth is warm and wet and slick with _her_, and when his teeth graze softly at the nylon of her stockings, indignation prompts a whine through her exhausted stupor.

Dark, wanting eyes roam her expression, and he teases with a playful tug along the silky hemlines of her hosiery. “I hope you’re not attached to these.”

She shouldn’t laugh - he doesn’t need encouragement - but tipsy giggles rise her throat before she can resist them. “Like that’s ever stopped you before.”

He smiles, unrepentant, hunger dark and heavy in his gaze as she feels him wind another coarse tendon of rope around her hips. For now he leaves her stockings thankfully intact, his focus honed once more on her containment. She watches him from under heavy eyelids as he strings her up like so much precious artwork, and by the time her racing heart has settled back to resting rate, her knees hang snug and cradled in red jute, anchored in winding rings that lock her thighs apart, each hard line fastened and redoubled with the utmost certainty. 

She’s never felt so small as when she’s tied here, tethered into stillness and suspension. Her thoughts have all been thoroughly dissolved under the agonizing feeling of the binds against her skin, and there is only void, a tranquil darkness where her worries once held fast. 

Like an earth in slow rotation, Mercy spins. Colt runs his palms along her open thighs, his gaze spanning her body as she turns, and there is an immensity of satisfaction in his eyes - like he has shaped her into his entire world, and he could spend a century surveying his domain. 

Then his fist curls tight around the ropes above her knee, and his free hand sinks into her hair, angling her head back for a kiss that feels like being claimed. Gingerly he loosens the elastic from her hair again, and a whisper of relief sighs on her tongue at the brief sense of liberation. His fingers are demanding as he conquers the slope of her waist, rolling his thumb over the ropes that hold her captive with devotion in his touch. 

“Jesus, Mercy.” A strangled laugh, his hands mapping a tantalizing trail across her skin. “If you knew how fucking good you look…” He swings her close against his chest, forcing her knees open around him. The rough of denim scrapes her thighs, and in the space between them she can feel how hard he is, twitching beneath his pants. He grits a curse out when she squirms against him, hips pitching a frantic thrust in response. 

The click of his belt resonates behind her ribs, flickers of anticipation squeezing at her heart. She whimpers her impatience, and he soothes her with a clumsied hand between her legs, two fingers sliding over slickened skin and pushing in, working against that perfect point inside of her until her hips are trembling around him. 

Broken pleas bounce on her tongue, and he bites a groan against her shoulder, catching his lip between his teeth as finally he frees himself. His knuckles brush her first, the heavy head of his cock prodding in against her, and her mouth spills open in a tortured noise as he angles his hips and nudges in, guiding her down around him.

Colt moves slowly, knuckles white against red ropes and the bronze of her skin. Her nerves exult with _yes, finally, yes_, the sweetest ache of taking as he pushes deeper. She would be embarrassed by the sounds that bubble up her throat if she weren’t consumed with brute force pleasure when he comes to rest against her, and she feels him _everywhere:_ the darkness between heartbeats, at the height and fall of every breath that filters through her lungs; her senses are all filled with _Colt_, his grip, his ropes, his cock, pleasure and pain in blissful counterpoints across her body.

“Oh, _fuck_.” He shivers out a laugh, hips trembling a lazy thrust that draws another groan up through his teeth. “_Mercy_. You feel so _good_, sweetheart.” 

Affection warms the center of her heart, but her words seem to be strung up with the rest of her. Half-bitten syllables ring in her throat, short nonsense sounds all shaped around a breathy moan as rapture tightens like a fist inside of her. She cries out when his hips lock hard against her own, the warmth of tears brimming along her lashes. Her body sings with overstimulation, agony and ecstasy, throbbing under future bruises and the ruthless slice of pleasure rocking through her.

He fucks another urgent thrust, dropping his fingers to the slick point where they fit together. Raw and tender in the fading embers of her climax, she recoils, anguish chasing every vibrant lick of pleasure as his thumb spirals relentless pressure at her clit. Blissful tears track silver down her cheeks, plumes of searing pleasure lashing out like lightning from his touch. 

“I can’t, I can’t-!” She sobs a string of frantic noises, trembling in her restraints, but Colt persists until the thinnest lance of panic claws up through her. Writhing only reinforces the extent of her confinement, and there is no retreating from the overwhelming flood of rapture, pinned between his clever fingers and the rigid weight of him inside of her. It’s all too _much_, too soon, more than her fraying nerves can take; some primal part of her fears she might shatter into pieces if she didn’t have his ropes and hands to hold her all together. 

His fingers curl around the column of her throat, holding with the faintest pressure as her eyes open to meet his own. “One more time,” he groans, and for a moment, he sounds almost pleading. “Come for me again.” 

The need in his voice wracks a shiver down her spine. Against her seething instincts, Mercy grits her teeth and eases all the tension from her muscles, letting herself fall into his touch. Her body reels under the onslaught of sensation, jerking with each scorching stroke his thumb slides in against her clit, and she is on the brink of crying out for mercy when a cinder of anticipation catches somewhere in the pit of her gut. 

Colt watches recognition cross her features, triumph lighting in his eyes as the muscles in her hips begin to tense. Adrenaline drives wild through her veins, the familiar leap in her pulse when she’s done something far too reckless and the threat of losing all control looms overhead. Her heels dig in against his thighs, coaxing him closer with the last dregs of her strength until his hips shudder against her, fingers gripping tight around her thigh. The sharp tearing of nylon sounds as the first stocking gives way to his urgency, and the sudden roughness of his fingertips against her bare skin has her pleading restlessly for more, desperate for closeness when his ropes have kept her so unbearably contained. 

Clutching his fist among the bonds that cross her shoulders, he obliges with a hard swing of his hips, driving in to the hilt and groaning at the feel of her around him. “_Mercy_,” he breathes, her name surrender on his tongue, and with that ragged whisper, climax crashes over her. 

Riving pleasure crests and pulls her under, swaths of heat expanding out to scour every atom of her body. The tender branches of her nerves all spark with bliss, her eyelids screwing shut until the dark of rorschach flashes dance behind them. She feels herself clench tight around him as her lungs expel a strangled sigh and she is plummeting, untethered - _whole_. 

Colt twitches inside of her. His hips shove swift, erratic thrusts, fucking her with rough abandon as he tenses, curls against her, teeth nicking a fervent sound into her throat when he tips over after her. Shivers clamber up his shoulders, and his hands cling desperately along her hips, pressing almost to the point of pain as he comes apart with a shuddering moan. 

The waves of rapture gradually recede and leave her gasping to regain her breath, itching with the cooling sting of sweat as Colt leans heavily against her body. Her senses register in slow succession, trumpets fading in as if over a vast and winding distance. Residual endorphins bathe her through with numbing warmth, and in the mindless bliss that follows, Mercy feels like she is truly _home_.

Colt’s fingers travel softly down her cheek, grazing the heartbeat at the hollow of her throat as he looks her over. “You’re all right?” 

She’s fallen somewhere far beyond the capability of speech. She bobs a dreamy nod instead, his breathless laughter more than compensation for the effort. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Beneath the satisfaction in his roughened voice, there is a tenderness that sinks like easy tides around her heart. “Sit tight, brat.” His lips brush her forehead, her cheekbones, the dimple that corners her mouth when she giggles under his attention. “Let me take care of you.”

A deep exhaustion washes over as he begins to free the knots that tether her in place. Her feet have barely touched the floor before he lifts her into his arms with deliberate ease, red ropes hooked loose around his knuckles as he carries her to bed. 

The bedsheets harbor an exquisite coolness when he sinks her down against them, though she’s rapidly descending from the high of her euphoria. Her shoulders ache behind the joints, the muscles in her legs giving a spasm of protest when she attempts to move them. 

“Easy.” Colt soothes his palms over her quaking thighs. “I’ll get it.” His touch borders on reverent as he sweeps her hair aside with careful fingers, baring the bouquet of knots he’s fashioned down the center of her back. He pauses, drinking in the sight of her, and she blushes to imagine what she looks like: corded crimson with his claim, skirt rucked above her hips, the insides of her thighs slicked with the both of them.

He frees her hands first, and she can’t help sobbing in relief, tears rolling down her face as he nestles a kiss into each palm. 

The tying is an anchor, sanctity of structure, safe and sanctuary.

The untying is ritual release.

The longest sort of worship, bleary-eyed and blissed to stupor, limp against the sheets as he unwinds her knot by knot. 

Mercy sprawls an aching arch across the bed when she is finally unbound, but Colt is far from finished. Gentle fingers peel her clothes away, exposing angry tracks of red that he attends to with the barest touch of lips, soothing where his love has left its mark. The tatters of her stockings he discards with only a smug look before proceeding, pressing his affection into every trench his ropes have carved across her body.

He’s taken a detour along her collarbone when finally she finds the strength to move, lifting her palm to cup his jaw and drag him down into a very tired kiss.

“Thank you,” she breathes, tracing her fingertips along the confident shape of his smirk. “I needed that.”

“I know.” 

And Mercy laughs, rolls lazily onto her side to smile up at him. “Because you know everything.”

“You’re not wrong.” He grins and nips with gentle pressure at the bare skin of her shoulder. “But I know you best. When you didn’t text me fifty kiss and heart emojis, I figured you were in your head and overstressing again.”

“I stress the appropriate amount,” she protests, and then he’s laughing with her. “And be nice. It’s midterms. I’m Type A.”

“I’m being extremely nice.” His fingertips pause in their idle tracing to stray pointedly over the ridges left imprinted on her skin. “Hence, rope.” 

“Mmn, and candlelight, and jazz. I must be spoiled.”

He shrugs, his smirk returning with a sinful edge. “If I’m gonna tie you up and fuck you, I might as well do it right.”

The blush resurges in her cheeks, as he intended, and he chuckles as she hides her face in the crook of his neck. Pressed against his body, she can hear the rhythm of his heart behind his ribs, steady and slow, a perfect constant when the world is moving far too fast around her. There will be more midterms and more deadlines and more late nights speeding home, but right now she has everything she needs between her aching arms.

As far as Mercy is concerned, the rest can wait.


End file.
